Monday, 30 March 2015

It's GREAT, it's FUN,
it's Cheeky Weekly issue 88, one week after the introduction of the new look (which will be completed this issue as we shall see later). The comic
commences with a front-page reminder that, despite the revamp, reader
participation features Paddywack, Joke-Box Jury and Chit-Chat
continue to offer £2 prizes to successful contributors. Also on the
cover is a Mike Lacey depiction of Cheeky suffering a typically
traumatic encounter with Yikky-Boo, in an image sourced from the
Thursday page of Cheeky Weekly dated 24 February 1979.

On Sunday Cheeky
introduces a new member of the supporting cast – it's Welsh wag Taff the Laff.

Nigel Edwards deputises
for Ian Knox on this week's 6 Million Dollar Gran episode, in which the
synthetic senior citizen foils an attempt to divert an aeroplane, by landing a punch on the
hi-jacker through the fuselage while the 'plane is in flight. Rather
a risky strategy for all concerned but it pays off.

Art: Nigel Edwards

On Tuesday Yikky-Boo
is, due to a culinary misadventure, somewhat less ebullient than during his front page appearance. There then follows some hypnotic humour involving new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Conservatives had won the recent general election on 03 May 1979, taking control of the country from Labour, led by Prime Minister James Callaghan (hence Cheeky's concluding joke, which wouldn't work so well as a spoken gag since the ousted PM's name was pronounced 'Callahan').

Art: Mike again

The centre pages are
taken up by a colour road safety ad in the form of a comic strip
entitled Football Crazy and starring the Green Cross man.

This week's Star Guest
is Lolly Pop (with of course his exasperated offspring, Archie),
giving his home comic of the time, Whoopee, a plug. This story, drawn by Barry
Glennard, is Pop's second Star Guest visit to Cheeky Weekly – Pop
kicked off the Star Guest run back in the special 31 March 1979 issue of the toothy funster's comic, illustrated on that occasion by the strip's then regular artist - Sid Burgon.

On this week's
Chit-Chat page, Cheeky's message gives us some insight into the
tribulations of producing a comic, and then the toothy funster has to
apologise to reader Julie Mock for omitting her name from the list of
Smurf Competition winners back in the 24 March 1979 comic.

Nosy Nora makes her
final Cheeky Weekly appearance (in a non-speaking role), as one of
Cheeky's classmates in the second panel of the Friday page.

Mike again

On Saturday Cheeky is
sent to do the shopping, and is given an even more onerous task in
the final panel where, thanks to some deft copy-and-paste work, he
informs readers of impending strain on their pocket money.

Mike, with a Frank McDiarmid Cheeky
pasted into the final panel

The comic rounds off
with a new strip elevating Cheeky's mollusc mate to become the star
of his own feature.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

The two new strips which commenced last week (The Gang and Stage School) are joined by Snail of the Century to complete the 'new look'. It would seem Snail's debut in his own feature was delayed by 7 days due to the presence of a colour advertisement on last week's back page.

Mike Lacey delivers 8 Cheeky's Week elements in this issue, a figure which includes Mike's reprinted cover art as one element (but the 2-page Saturday is also counted as a single element, so it kind of compensates), with Frank McDiarmid supplying the artwork for Snail of the Century, a new addition to the Cheeky's Week roster as of this edition. However, Frank's contribution of a Cheeky in the final panel of Saturday is not included in the count.

Sunday, 22 March 2015

The issue of Whizzer and Chips in which Store Wars made its debut (dated 05 September 1981 and referenced in an earlier post) also contained a 'raid' carried out by Cheeky. The toothy funster had been appearing in Whizzer and Chips as a member of The Krazy Gang since Krazy comic folded in April 1978, and the 05 September 1981 issue of course predates the post-Whoopee-merge period which I'm documenting in the Whizzer and Chips - the Cheeky Raids series. However, since I had the comic to hand and we can never have too much of a Cheeky thing, I thought I'd record in this post the occasion on which our grinning pal ventured into enemy Whizzer territory and brought back a trophy...

Whizzer and Chips 05 September 1981

Unlike the raids I'm covering in the series of posts mentioned above, this raid was perpetrated and announced within the same issue. Here's the Champ story from that same edition...

Whizzer and Chips 05 September 1981Art:Paul Ailey

In the same issue Cheeky, along with the rest of The Krazy Gang, was involved in fruit-picking fun.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

One of the many pleasures of being a comic enthusiast is the unexpected 'ghostings' one occasionally encounters - it's always fascinating to see how one mighty wielder of the pen will depict characters who have a strong connection to another luminary of the visual arts. Over at the ever-excellent Kazoop blog Irmantas has posted some superb colour work by Frank McDiarmid on Kid Kong. Do yourself a favour and head on over to experience this rare treat.

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Store Wars, a rollicking tale of retail rivalry, made its debut in Whizzer and Chips dated 05
September 1981. Rather unusually for a humour strip at that time, the
feature's initial instalment ran to 3 pages (and the fourth panel
contains an image of utter despondency, the like of which I've never seen in a
kids' humour strip).

Whizzer and Chips 05 September 1981

For many years I was unable to put a name to the artist who first drew the strip (artwork duties on Store Wars were eventually passed to Jim Watson and then apparently Jimmy Hansen although I don't recall that myself). In latter years I came to associate this artists's work with the name Doug Goodwin. I wasn't the only one to make that connection, as evidenced by the Wikipedia entry for Store Wars.

However, I was recently perusing Whizzer and Chips dated 27 September 1986, and spotted the first letter on the Sid's Whizz-kids page...

Whizzer and Chips 27 September 1986

Vigilant reader Robert Ravenscroft had noted a change in the artwork style on Store Wars, because as of the 02 August 1986 'new look' issue, reprints drawn by the original artist had replaced episodes drawn by Jim Watson. Just for comparison, here's the Store Wars story from the issue of Whizzer and Chips in which the letter above appeared...

Whizzer and Chips 27 September 1986

I think we can all agree that this artist is the same person who drew the first episode above.

I must have read the letter and reply when I bought the comic in 1986, but unfortunately over the years the artist's name evidently exited my brain via a gap in a bunch of neurons.

Now, you may be thinking that we're veering somewhat from Cheeky-related matters here, but this does in fact impact on the Cheeky canon, as the artist I now know to be Doug Jensen drew a nine-page Stage School tale in the Cheeky Annual cover-dated 1985. Here's the first instalment...

Art: Doug Jensen

Sadly, a quick online search doesn't turn up any info regarding Doug Jensen, comic artist, although there is an animator of that name who was credited with work during the 1970s. If anyone has more details please get in touch.

Thursday, 5 March 2015

Making its debut in
Cheeky Weekly number 87 (the 'New Look' issue), Stage School brought
a new twist to that staple of British comics, the eternal battle
between schoolkids and their teacher. The spin in this case was that
the pupils all aspired to careers in show-business and would thus
rather be spending time in the Stage School located across
the playground from the 'real class' in which most of the stories
took place. Real lessons were taught by a typically bad-tempered
teacher wearing the traditional robe and mortarboard, who detested
all matters relating to entertainment. The kids' showbiz teacher appeared only occasionally but, in
contrast to the real teacher, was a cheery sort who sported a cravat, an item of neckwear
which was a late 1970s shortcut to denote 'arty'
types – see also Are You Being Served?, The Dick Emery Show, The Two
Ronnies etc.

First episode, Cheeky Weekly 07 July 1979
Art: Robert Nixon

Each of the kids
focused on a particular branch of showbusiness. The class
included, among others, a mini-magician, a ballerina, Jo-Jo the
trainee clown, Merla the mindreader and a junior ventriloquist. The kids employed their own peculiar talents and skills to disrupt the progress of lessons in real class. Perhaps the most memorable student was incompetent escapologist Houdanny (cf Erich Weisz aka Harry Houdini), who spent most strips failing to emerge from a sack
wrapped in chains and padlocks.

Stage School was absent from just 5 of the issues published after its commencement, notching up appearances in 26 issues, including the final
edition of the toothy funster's comic dated 02 February 1980. All but 3 episodes were drawn by Robert Nixon, with Barry Glennard
deputising in Mr Nixon's absence. 22 stories were 2-pagers, the remainder concluding within a
single page. A single SS strip was in colour, the rest being in
black and white.

Robert Nixon

The feature's original
title panel depicted a stage with spotlight falling on Teacher as
he retracted the sleeve of his cane-wielding arm, the more easily to apply a thrashing to a
perspiring pupil's posterior. This somewhat discomfiting tableau was
replaced as of the 24 November 1979 issue by a panel simply
displaying the strip's title surrounded by stars. This revised intro
frame design (with its customary snow-bedecked variant in the
Christmas 1979 issue) continued to appear until the end of the Cheeky
Weekly run.

Was Houdanny yet another Cheeky Weekly
Inconsistent Hair Colour Syndrome sufferer?
Or was he just experimenting with hair dye as part
of his showbiz course?

The showbiz shenanigans
extended to the Cheeky Weekly Holiday Special 1980 and the 1981
Summer Special, each of which contained a single, 2-page Stage School
story drawn by Barry Glennard. Teacher and his theatrically-inclined
students also appeared in the Cheeky Annuals cover-dated 1981 (1
story, drawn by Barry Glennard), 1982 (1 story, Robert Nixon), 1983
(1 story, Jim Watson), 1984 (1 story, Barry Glennard) and 1985 (three 3-page instalments of a story drawn by Doug Jensen). In the same
Annual we also witness Cheeky reading a Stage School tale, which
sets our toothy pal cogitating on a possible career for himself in the footlights.

Our mini showbiz chums' tyrannical teacher (never named in the stories) was among the
characters who met their future Whoopee colleagues as the merge with
that title was announced in the final issue of the toothy funster's
comic.

Art: Robert Nixon

The strip then
became a permanent fixture in Whoopee until that title was itself
cancelled and merged into Whizzer and Chips as of April 1985. This commendable 5-year run in Whoopee had seen the characters referred to in Cheeky Weekly as Olga and Shakespearian Sam rechristened Margot and Hammy respectively. The school's headmaster, who appeared only once in Cheeky Weekly, became a recurring character during the strip's Whoopee run.

A nice fun feature benefiting from Robert Nixon's lively artwork, Stage School was among Cheeky Weekly's highlights and its extended Whoopee run made it the second longest surviving strip to have emerged from the Cheeky stable.

Over the years I'd come to assume that this strip was inspired by the movie Fame, but it seems the film premiered some months after the strip made its debut.